


Ephemera

by em_ebooks



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Aesthetics, Canon Era, Existential Angst, French Revolution, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, More German philosophy than strictly necessary, Pining, Print Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 17:51:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12917109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/em_ebooks/pseuds/em_ebooks
Summary: Grantaire gives Enjolras a gift, but neither of them are sure what it means.





	Ephemera

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bakasu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakasu/gifts).



_Recto_ :

 

He gave Enjolras one gift, before his final one. 

“Sur le Marc d’argent.” It was a lesser publication by the demon of ‘93, written before the sins of ‘93 were committed. Grantaire found the thing one day in a shop, beneath a pile of otherwise innocuous pamphlets from the last century. The shopkeeper, who had watched him since his arrival, became flustered at the sight of it, all hmphing and “not my personal wares, obviously.” 

When Grantaire opened it with some interest, however, his tone changed entirely.

“It’s signed by him, you know. And annotated.” 

He peered at it from beside Grantaire’s elbow, shrewd eyes moving between the handwritten notes and Grantaire. His eagerness almost caused Grantaire to shuffle the thing back into the pile of anonymous papers.

One note, a simple annotation in the margins of the second page, forced him to reconsider it. The pamphlet wasn’t meant to be kept—covered in edits and faded ink as it was—but to be used and thrown out. An in-between object written by a man in between two eras; a short-lived thing by a short-lived man. It was a cruelty to think of Enjolras as a part of that narrative, but then, he relished every feeling of ill-will towards the man that he could muster. It gave him strength, and something like self-knowledge.

“How do you know it’s not forged?”

“I don’t,” the shopkeeper said, “but I’ll sell it to you for a sous.”

“The people ask only for what is necessary,” Grantaire read aloud, “they only want justice and tranquility. The rich aspire to everything—”

“Ssh!” the shopkeeper hissed, though it was not a scandalous line and there was no one else in the shop.

And so he bought it at half price. The shopkeeper threw in an additional tract by Pufendorf too, so he could tuck the offending object between its pages.

Enjolras’ reaction caused far less of a scene. It was quite dull, in fact.

“What is this?” He asked, staring at the drawing Grantaire had provided on the pamphlet’s verso. He did not turn it over, not even to answer his own question.

They stood in the back of a nameless cafe, waiting—in theory—for others to join them there. It was too early in the day for steady clientele: a foreigner sat and wrote near the room’s only window, and Bahorel dozed nearby.

“It’s a gift,” said Grantaire.

Enjolras spared him a disbelieving glance before he turned it over to the title page at last. When he looked to Grantaire again, it was with narrowed eyes. With blonde hair falling from a loose tail, and heavy, sleepless shadows on his face, he looked more like a haggard lawyer that day than a spirited student. Like Desmoulins before him, or like the lesser Robespierre—a child at the start of things, and something more and less than that as the years began to close their sutures. He would not appreciate the comparison, Grantaire knew.

“I didn’t know you drew. Is the gift the drawing, or its canvas?”

“A deeply metaphysical question,” Grantaire said, and was satisfied to see the corner of Enjolras’ mouth twitch. “Almost German, in fact. Where does the spirit reside? Can one man bequeath it to another?”

Enjolras’ almost-smile faded as he opened the pamphlet, soft-worn pages folded over fine-boned hands.

“You’ve written on it as well.”

Grantaire paused, then swallowed the truth. “You already know Maxime’s thoughts. Now you’ll know mine as well.” 

“I know your thoughts well enough. Me and everyone else in spitting distance of a tavern.” Enjolras shook his head. He turned the pamphlet over again, a complete cycle. 

“I like the drawing best of all.” He glanced up at Grantaire. He seemed almost shy, in that moment. “Thank you,” he said. “For bequeathing your spirit. Or something like it.”

 

 

_Verso_ :

 

Grantaire’s time under the tutelage of Baron Gros had been brief and strewn with a great number of distractions. The fruit laid out as props were the finest he’d ever seen, and so too were the women. The latter, he eventually befriended by slipping drinks and scraps of bawdy poems. The former, he realized too late—biting with guilt and relish alike into a perfectly-rounded peach—were covered in wax. 

His paintings, then, were distracted and unfinished: too thin in places and too thick in others. He had no eye for color. His drawings, like him, were ugly. It was fitting, he thought, though Gros didn’t agree. Grantaire left his apprenticeship after less than a week.

The drawing that accompanied “Sur le Marc d’argent” was accordingly ugly. Haggard, unpracticed lines depicted this: An old man tending to his garden in a church near L’Aigle’s flat, crouched on his knees to pull weeds from hallowed ground. He laid the weeds out one-by-one, in a perfect row. It was as if they were rows of graves, spread as they were along the tidy paths of the church grounds. The man’s hands as he touched them were reverent. In rest, his bowed head was mournful, like he regretted each death as that of a dazzling flower or hearty crop. 

Grantaire’s sketch couldn’t capture the man himself, though he liked to think it captured his pensiveness. Perhaps it captured, too, some of the ways that Grantaire saw Enjolras and his absence in the scene: the way that Enjolras treated weeds as flowers, or the way that he’d never, ever have the chance to grow old.

Enjolras had, in any case, propped the drawing up next to his bed, leaning it against a stack of books. Grantaire looked at it sidelong from where he lay beside it, sprawled on the small pallet with a disheveled Enjolras tucked close to him. Enjolras’ shirt and pants were still open from when they’d stumbled into bed a half hour before. He did not stand to dress himself, though, as he often did right after. Nor did he push himself up on one arm to stare at Grantaire in inscrutable silence, as he’d taken to doing more recently. Despite being wild in every other aspect, he breathed quietly into Grantaire’s chest. 

Grantaire threaded callused hands through his hair in a way that might be devout, if he hadn’t cataloged all of Enjolras’ earthly sins ages ago. “I never took you for sentimental,” he said, to interrupt his own thoughts.

Enjolras lifted his head to peer at the drawing, and let it fall again to his chest. “If I weren’t,” he said, “you wouldn’t be here.”

Grantaire kissed the side of his head, where his hair grew soft and sparse like a child’s. 

“Am I the old man?” Enjolras said, after a moment.

“What?”

“The old man in the drawing. Killing the innocent to make the garden more beautiful.” It was obvious when he said this that he’d spent a long time looking at it.

“No,” said Grantaire. “No, that’s the churchwarden down near L’Aigle. You know.”

They talked like this, sometimes, in the aftermath of coupling. Grantaire, more literal than usual, and Enjolras more metaphorical, meeting somewhere in the middle of things they couldn’t say. Still, Grantaire felt the words catch in his throat when Enjolras said, “No, that’s not it. I don’t know much about art, but I do know you. It’s more than that, and it has nothing to do with voting rights.”

“I have plenty to say about voting rights, did you not read the notes?”

Enjolras sat up fully then, to look him in the face. “You didn’t write those.”

“No,” he said immediately, “I didn’t.”

Enjolras sighed. “Then why would you say you did?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Why would you give me a gift and not tell me what it is?”

Grantaire shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Enjolras sat up. He looked young and adrift in that moment, and utterly beautiful. Grantaire wanted to run from him, to hold his hand and drag him away from the war he planned to fight. He wanted to give him something, anything, that would keep him there, thinking instead of acting, aging out of beauty and into obsolescence. 

“You talk in circles about government,” Enjolras said to him, “about philosophy and poetry and sovereignty. I thought perhaps it would be different, in matters of the heart.”

Grantaire swallowed. “Is that what this is? A matter of the heart?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking away. “The writings of my hero alongside the art of my—of you? You know I'm lost in these matters. I had hoped you could compensate for my lack, but I think I’ve grown tired of the subject already.” 

He stood, then, and began to straighten and close his trousers. In mere moments, he was composed again, radiant and self-assured. He began to gather his things to leave for the Musain, leaving Grantaire half-dressed in his own bed without regard.

“I’ll do better next time,” Grantaire said, as Enjolras reached for the door.

“With the gift,” Enjolras said, “or its meaning?”

“Both,” he said.

Enjolras smiled, almost sardonic, and then he was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> This story about gifts was written as a gift for the beautiful and eternal @bakasu. It features many of the things we both wish the Les Mis fandom had more of: canon era, a more vulnerable Enjolras, and a fine, healthy fear of death. Don’t let anyone tell you I don’t know how to celebrate a birthday.


End file.
